Riverside

Estuarine life, earning a living in a liminal space. The river here was once widely known for its salmon and sea trout ('sewin'), so they were caught as food, of course. The local technique was 'seine net fishing'. It was brought here by French monks and I thought it must be something to do with the Paris river, but that's not the etymology at all. The system stretches a net across the flow of the river; the bottom is held down by weights, the top held up by floats, each end is a boat (or a boat and the bank), the flow takes the fish into the net. Once, there were 150 people here fishing the river; the BBC interviewed the last one in 2020

The word 'seine' is just old English (and originally Greek) for a drag-net, I find. Maybe they did do it in Paris too, and that's how the river got its name. The wooden poles (standards) on which the fisherfolk hung their nets to dry are still there in the village, in a place called a 'netpool'. There was once a Netpool Inn beside them, now closed. There is a Netpool Road in Cardigan, beside the netpool on the other bank. Nets were hung up to dry after soaking them in tannin - a protection against the salty estuarine water. It feels like a marine echo of the 'tenters' drying woolen cloth on Oxfordshire hillsides

Nearby is a boat-building area - Y Pinog (I can't find out anything about this strange word) - right beside the high tide mark. The fishing boats and some other craft were built here - the local design has shaped oars, that reach lower than straight oars, to ensure contact with the water in choppy, estuarine conditions

All of this effort, all of this labour, to eke out a living here. Not everyone succeeded. Climbing back up the hill, we pased the austere facade of the workhouse - now holiday lets, but still betraying its history

On a grey day, the light strengthened a little as the sun approached the horizon. For a moment, the estuary looked serene, the hard-scrabble of past lives forgotten